Vito Caiati writes,
. . . while I see the wisdom in your assertion “no one is likely to take up, and stick with, serious meditation, meditation as part of a spiritual quest, unless he is the recipient of grace, a certain free granting ab extra,” I am troubled about the soteriological implications of such a view. I find it troubling that the necessary grace would be restricted to a relatively small portion of humanity, while the rest of us remain “lost in the diaspora of sense objects.” Is it your assessment that few are called to a higher state of consciousness, or is it that the call is more generally available but drowned out by the distraction fits to which the human mind inevitably falls prey?
What I want to say is that no one is likely to commit himself to a serious meditation practice with all that it entails unless he has had certain experiences which, phenomenologically, exhibit a gift-character and that point to a depth-dimension below or beyond surface mind. By that I mean experiences that seem as if granted by a Grantor external to the consciousness of the meditator whether or not, in reality, they are grantings or vouchsafings of such a Grantor. (One example of such an experience is that of a sudden, unintended, descent into a blissful state of mental silence.) This formulation is neutral as between the Pali Buddhist denial of divine grace and the Christian affirmation of it.
But even on this neutral formulation, Caiati's problem arises. Small is the number of those who are capable of having these experiences, and smaller still the number of those who actually have them. And among those who actually have them, still smaller is the number of those who set foot on the spiritual path and keep it up. And among the latter only some of them, and maybe none of them, attain the Goal. We cannot be sure that Prince Siddartha attained it. It would seem to be a very bad arrangement indeed if salvation were to be available only to a tiny number of people.
I think that this is a really serious problem for Buddhism. I have met met many a Buddhist meditator, but none of them struck me as enlightened. And the same goes for the Stoics and Skeptics I have met: none of them struck me as having attained ataraxia. The vast, vast majority of Buddhist meditators will die unenlightened. Unless you believe in rebirth, that's it for them.
The same problem does not arise for Christianity. In Christianity, unlike in Buddhism, there is no salvation without a divine Savior, the agnus dei qui tollit peccata mundi. The Savior doesn't do all the work, but the work that remains to be done can be done by any ordinary person who sincerely accepts Jesus Christ as his savior and who lives in accordance with that acceptance. Faith is the main thing, not knowledge, insight, or realization. There is no need for special experiences. Perhaps we can say that the soteriology of the East is noetic, that of the Middle East pistic. But I should immediately add that contemplative practices and mystical theology play a large role in Christianity with the exception of Protestant Christianity.
As I see it, faith is inferior to knowledge and any knowledge of spiritual things we can acquire here below can only serve to bolster our faith. Speaking for myself, given my skeptical mind, philosophical aptitude, and scientific education, I would probably not take theism seriously at all if it were not for a range of mystical, religious, and paranormal experiences that I have had. They, together with arguments for theism and arguments against metaphysical naturalism, incline me toward theism to such an extent that that I live as if it is true. 'As if it is true' does not imply that it is not true; it signals my not knowing whether or not it is true.
But you may be of a different opinion and perhaps you have reasons that justify your opinion. No one KNOWS the ultimate answer. Toleration, therefore, is needed, the toleration of those who respect the principle of toleration, and therefore, not Sharia-supporting Muslims or other anti-Enlightenment types such as throne-and-altar reactionaries. What is needed are toleration and the defense of religious liberty which along with free speech and other sacred American rights are under assault by the Democrat Party in the USA. This hard-Left party needs to taste bitter defeat. And so, as strange as it may sound, if you cherish the free life of the mind and the free life of the spirit, you must vote for Donald J. Trump in 2020.
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